


take god off the shelf, shake the dirt from his shoulders

by weird_bird (2weird4)



Series: more than luck [4]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), The Question (Comics)
Genre: Cooking, Culture, F/F, Families of Choice, Gen, Religious Discussion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-15 03:50:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10549594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/2weird4/pseuds/weird_bird
Summary: Relaxing, Jasón shakes his head. “I’ll lie to a cop, but I’m not gonna lie toMaria Elena.Are you kidding me?”Renee snorts. “Yeah. Smart kid.” She wouldn’t mess with anybody’s Mexican grandmother, either.Part 4 of a series where Kate and Renee adopt Jason. First part set pre-adoption, second post-adoption. Can be read independently, but reading part 1 will help.





	

**Author's Note:**

> title from "waking up" by emily palermo. 
> 
> **warning** for possible...blasphemy? and a lot of food mentions. vague references to homophobia, discussion of cultural alienation.

“They were all out of unsweetened coconut milk,” Renee explains as she sets down the rustling paper bags on the squeaky-clean countertop, “so I just got sweetened. Is that all right?”

She’s sealed her fate. She’s about to die, right here and now, under the withering glare of Maria Elena.

Maria Elena--always both names at once, and Renee learned that the hard way--lives two doors down from Renee in their shitty apartment complex. She totters when she walks, she can hardly see, but she can _cook._ Renee still dreams about that tupperware of leftover menudo from her friend’s daughter’s wedding, the best she’s ever tasted.

“Well, ah. Everything else on the list should be about right.” How badly could she screw up ‘salt, avocados, bananas’? She brings them out of the bags one by one without looking at her face so she doesn’t have to find out.

Friend’s daughters, hallway neighbors, other people’s granddaughters and other people’s grandmothers, that’s all Renee and Maria Elena have left in Gotham. And so Renee doesn’t mind picking up some groceries at the corner store for the crotchety old woman who berates her like her abuela used to do.

“This is not enough bananas,” Maria Elena complains. “How many days are there in a week?”

Feeling like a child, Renee mumbles, “Seven days.”

“Seven days, seven bananas,” she continues severely as she, in an impressive move, hooks the bananas over her walker and trundles them over to the counter. 

“Here’s your change.” Renee drops the coins into her palm.

Today, Maria Elena does not count them.

That’s what they call progress. 

“Mass in one hour,” she hollers, making Renee jump to attention before she realizes the shout is directed at someone else. “Are you finished?”

“One last avocado to peel!”

Which begs the question _why_ Renee was sent out for avocados. Not that she plans to question it. 

Maria Elena’s kitchen is a place of mysteries. The last time Renee watched her whip up enfrijoladas and tried to ask after the recipe, her answers consisted of: “season it until it tastes good,” “cook it until it is finished,” and “make as much as you think you need.”

“No. You are finished. Come out now.”

“Si, señora.” A black mop head pokes obediently out of the kitchen. A very familiar black mop head. 

“Yes. Come here.” Maria Elena crooks a finger to beckon the boy to her and presses the coins into his hand. Quicker than Renee knew she could move, she fishes out a couple of bills from her purse and folds his fingers over it all, tight as eagle-claws. “Take the money, Jasón.”

 _“You.”_ Renee narrows her eyes at J. _Jasón._

Jasón looks just as startled for a moment, but then he falls back onto a grin. “Detective Montoya. Or is it Detective Kane yet?”

Renee twists the ring on her finger back and forth. “Haven’t even set a date yet.” They’ll work it out. It’s a joyful kind of surreal to be able to say that with so much surety now.

Maria Elena does occasionally dig for details on her engagement. She hasn’t found sufficient cause to tell this woman with an Our Lady of Guadalupe candle about the woman who lights the fire inside her. 

Jasón senses something wrong. He’s clearly very intelligent--often to Renee he seems older than his years, and not just in the way that all kids who grow up in the street do. And smartly, he switches topics. “I turned the stove off, so you don’t have to worry.”

“I always turn the stove off,” Maria Elena huffs. She reaches for her sweater and pulls it on arm by arm. “I have a blanket for you on the sofa.”

Folding it, Jasón tucks it under his arm with a look of quiet gratitude while Renee watches, curious about the dynamic between the two (she’s not incapable of being a silent observer--they didn’t give her the detective title because she looks good with a pipe in her mouth). “Next time, will you teach me to make tamales?”

“Next time, I will make tamales,” she snaps as she buttons her sweater, “and you will eat.”

Jasón makes no protest, just murmurs _gracias_ and offers her his arm to help her out of the door. A moment later, he slides back down the hall to look at Renee, who’s turning the key in the lock to her own apartment.

“So you’ll tell her your name and you won’t tell me?” Renee’s only teasing despite her crossed arms. She’s glad he came back. She’s glad he knows where she lives now, in case he needs to knock on her door sometime. 

Relaxing, Jasón shakes his head. “I’ll lie to a cop, but I’m not gonna lie to _Maria Elena._ Are you kidding me?”

Renee snorts. “Yeah. Smart kid.” She wouldn’t mess with anybody’s Mexican grandmother, either. “You still want me to call you J, though?” Names are important. How somebody tells the self. Especially when _self_ is just about all somebody has.

He shakes his head again, though he does hesitate more this time. “Jasón’s okay.”

“Jasón,” she repeats. She nods towards the door. “You going to church?”

In answer, he holds up the blanket. “Spending the night.”

She had a friend who’d been kicked out of the house in high school who slept in that same church a few nights. _Nobody asks questions there,_ he told Renee. She hasn’t shown her face there since Dent outed her. Some part of Renee wants to believe the same rules would apply to her if she would go back. 

Can she go back? Almost every Dominican she grew up with in Gotham rejected her, which is why she turns to the corner store and an old Mexican lady who yells at her and a Latino kid who runs away from her. 

She’s been exiled to another island, one where nobody looks like her or talks like her because loving women means she can’t be from her own country anymore, and she’s just trying to find her people again.

Renee tucks her hands into her pockets and smiles at him. “Warm there?”

Jasón nods. “Only thing is the incense makes me sneeze.”

“Me too. You think they make a different kind for people with allergies?” Renee’s nose crinkles.

“What if you were a priest, and you were allergic?” Jasón suggests, giggle trapped like bubbles under his words.

“En le nombre del padre, del hijo y del espíritu santo-- _achoo!”_

That frees that laugh right up, and he shakes his head. He’s hanging around, and Renee should be responsible here and let him go help Maria Elena, but she likes him hanging around.

She talks about this kid all the time to Kate, who has a much bigger soft spot for kids in general than Renee, though she won’t readily admit it. But this kid, Renee likes.

Something’s gonna change, her gut tells her that, she just doesn’t know what yet.

“You go to church?” Jasón asks, then like he already knows that’s a _no,_ hopscotches to the next question. “You believe in God?”

“Wow. Heavy.” Renee props her hands on her hips. If he’s willing to ask such a big question, she’s gotta be willing to give him a big answer, too. “I don’t know. And I don’t know if it matters if I do. I have to live this life the only way I know how and what I don’t know...that’s up to whatever comes after.” 

Jasón inches a little closer to her side, frowning.

She doesn’t mean to say the rest. It just comes out. “I mean, what do I do if I say my prayers and count my rosary and get up there and they say there’s no room for me there?”

“You could make room.” Jasón steps in a little, a little closer. “You have a gun.”

Renee sputters out a scandalized laugh. “Don’t talk like that in front of Maria Elena.”

“I won’t. I think she has a gun, too.” He doesn’t jerk away, just looks up at her with round brown eyes.

Squeezing his skinny shoulder, she asks in turn, “Do you go to church? Do you believe in God?”

“Jasón!” Maria Elena croaks from the hallway, and Jasón pulls away hurriedly then with a “Vengo!” and she doesn’t blame him a single bit.

“Only to sleep,” he shoots as he backs away, holding his blanket to his chest. “And--I didn’t see him.”

Before Renee can make sense of that, he’s flying down the stairs, red jacket poofing up like wings.

 

Renee’s stomach growls with hunger as she reenters the apartment. Kate and Jasón have probably already eaten dinner, or she hopes they have. It’s late. She’s sure she can scrounge something up from the fridge.

To her surprise, she finds Kate and Jasón still in the kitchen, clustered together with an air of conspiracy. After his recent growth spurt, he no longer needs the stepstool to reach the stove, just climbs on it to get spices down from the top cabinet.

“What are you two cooking?” Renee sneaks up from behind Kate, but Kate pushes her back before she can get a good look at what’s simmering away on the stove.

“ _I’m_ cooking. Mom’s--”

“Helping.”

“Getting in the way.”

Kate huffs and turns away, turns back to Renee. She frog-marches her over to the table and parks her down.

With deep suspicion, Renee looks her splattered apron up and down. “Are you making--?” With a deep inhale of the aromas of cooking, her eyes go soft.

“It’s a surprise.” Kate puts a finger to her smiling lips.

It smells like… _home._

A bang and clatter of pots, and Kate runs off to make sure that Jasón’s preteen clumsiness doesn’t bring the whole kitchen down with him.

“Finished,” Jasón announces, and Kate returns to Renee just to push her back down before she can get up to help.

Renee grumblingly allows it.

Between them, they bring in three full plates, setting down Renee’s in front of her first before arranging themselves with their own.

Renee stares at the presentation. Sometimes Jasón, who watches too much Cutthroat Kitchen, gets fancy with presentation, but this time, it’s just a delicious, homey heap of all things good. White rice, green salad, braised chicken, and fried _tostones._

The emotion that slams into her takes her off-guard. Her mouth’s watering, sure, but she’s _tearing up._

“Ren?” Alarmed, Kate rubs her back. “She hasn’t even taken a bite. I told you it was too spicy.”

“You think everything’s too spicy.” Jasón flutters around her side. 

Terribly embarrassed--she wasn't taught to cry like a fountain at everything, and it's only her comfort with them that lets her tears trickle down her cheeks--Renee tries to wipe her eyes. “No--no, it looks good. It looks really good.” Just like Mama used to make. “How did you--?”

Jasón grins. “Maria Elena emailed me the recipe.”

Incredulous, Renee hiccups a laugh.

“I’m serious.” Jasón winds his arms around his shoulders and presses his soft cheek to her damp one.

Sniffing, she holds onto him tight. She can’t find words for the sweetness of this. Her free arm circles Kate’s waist, keeping her close, too.

“It’s gonna get cold,” Jasón says diplomatically. “You should eat. I bet you’re hungry.”

“You, too.” Kate pokes his stomach, and he huffs, retreating into his own space with a nod.

Renee looks down at the food. Then between Kate and Jasón, debating. She’s never asked for this before, and they always lean--happily--on the side of Kate’s faith. But. “I want to say grace.”

Without a word, Kate reaches out and links her fingers with Renee’s, then with Jasón’s. She’s the first to bow her head.

She takes a deep breath and grabs her family’s hands tight. This family she chooses and who chooses her. Acceptance without reservation. Belonging without small print. Her people, at last. _“Bendícenos…”_


End file.
